Including an introduction in the form of a
Newspaper article from the "Cynthiana Democrat", 117th Year - Number 28,
Thursday - July 11, 1985, provided by Mr. Wohlwinder

When the Great Depression was almost fun
- by Thelma Taylor

"Most of the boys signed their names with an 'X'," Cecil
Wohlwinder tells of the 16-year-olds who went to CCC Camp during the Great
Depression.

CCC stands for Civilian Conservation Corps, the program
said to be the closest to the heart of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt
and instituted to provide food, clothing and a small income for 250,000
unemployed young men from 1933 to 1942.

The corps accepted 300,000. Some of their work is still
visible in Harrison County, says Beverly "Popeye" Johnson of Marshall Avenue.
He says a pile of rock can be seen five miles north of Cynthiana and about
50 yards from U.S. 27 near Carlos Laytart's residence. There is another pile
off the Republican Pike, he says.

Johnson remembers that men from the Carlisle unit cleared
rocks from fields that weren't tillable in the 1930's. Now the land is in
use every year.

Wohlwinder says, every time he goes to Lexington, he looks
at a water gap he helped to build on a creek near the Mt. Carmel Christian
Church. "Every time I raised a rock, I saw a snake."

Johnson says the Carlisle barracks was located where the
high school is now.

The CCC legislation was introduced on March 21, 1933, passed
by a voice vote on March 31, and within a week, the first camp was opened
with 2,500 youth being put to work under the supervision of the U.S. Army.
Wohlwinder says facilities were crude and clothing issued to the men was
Army surplus, but camps and clothes improved as the program became
established.

"Nothing fit. If you wore a size nine shoe, you were issued
a 10. We gathered our fatigues in the back with our belts to keep them on.
The dress pants had tight legs," Wohlwinder explains. "The material was about
like our blankets. We cut a strip from a blanket and sewed a triangular patch
from the knee down to make room in the pants' legs. You'd see a guy walking
down the side of the bunks and looking down. He was looking for a blanket
(from which) to snip off a piece to sew onto his pants."

Wohlwinder was paid $30 a month. He was allowed to keep
$5 and $25 was sent home. "That $5 made me a wealthy person," he explains
of the poverty that was typical of thousands of young men in the '30's. "My
mother was a widow. There were five of us. I was the oldest. She worked for
$3 a week. So I badgered Mrs. Allie Ewalt for two years to get me into the
CCCs. She'd say, "Cecil, you're too young.' Finally she said, 'I think I've
got a place for you.'

"Eleven of us boys from Harrison County went into Ft. Knox
as another group was coming back from out West. They yelled things at us
like 'Watch out for those long needles.' This was in March 1935. All I had,
I had on my back - a 'relief' sweater, overalls and tennis shoes."

Johnson says many of the boys had never worn underwear.
They were very proud of the "long johns" that were issued to them. Wohlwinder
remembers they were issued shaving kits. A kit contained a tooth brush, tooth
paste, shaving cream, razor, etc. The boys would brush their teeth with shaving
cream and they'd foam at the mouth. They also tried to shave with
toothpaste.

Wohlwinder remembers nine of the 10 men who left with him
for the West Coast. He believes only three are living. They were Jess Hutchison,
William Hatcher, Russell Laytart, Malcolm Caswell, Joe Tolle, Robert Morrison,
Ashbrook Garnett, Rufus Kears and James Coy.

They stayed in Ft. Knox for 18 days and worked on the new
mint. Then a troop train of 16 coaches and two baggage cars took them west
by way of Tennessee, Mississippi and Louisiana.

"We crossed the Mississippi on a ferry. It was a two mile
trip. One man jumped off in the middle of the river and drowned. Someone
dared him to jump. They couldn't get him back on," Wohlwinder recalls.

"We went through the southern part of Texas. I woke up
three mornings and asked where I was. The answer was always, 'Texas.' The
troop train was not scheduled. It only ran when it could. We were even
sidetracked for hand cars.

"Men were dropped off along the way. Thirty-five of us
were the last to leave the train. We got off at Redding, Calif. Trucks were
waiting for us. We were replacements.

"I rode in a dump truck over the roughest 79 miles of road
you can imagine. We were issued three blankets and a mattress cover. We were
taken to a straw stack and told to fill the mattress with straw. We laid
the straw mattresses on double-decker beds made of 2x4s. A blanket covered
the mattress. A second blanket was a sheet and the third was a cover. We
used our overcoats for pillows.

"Being German, I loved our first meal - sauerkraut, wieners
and mashed potatoes! This was standard Army food and cost 15 cents a
meal.

"We cleared right-of-ways at Mad river, then were moved
to White Fish, Mont. And built new barracks in the mountains. This is where
we got our mascot, a goat. Billy provided us with a lot of entertainment.
He chewed the top off the doctor's 1934 Ford convertible. He'd climb the
fire ladder to the top of the barracks.

"He loved to butt. When we went to the shower house we
always kept our eyes roaving to catch sight of Billy. A major came once a
month to inspect the camp. He left the officer's quarters one morning with
a towel around him and his clean clothes over his arm.

"He didn't know about Billy. Some boys were watching. Here
came Billy from behind the barracks. He banged the major. The old major was
down on his hands and knees picking up soap and clothes while Billy was backing
up for another charge.

"We never saw Billy again. We ate lamb after that. We thought
it might have been Billy.

"An old dog came to us in Montana, a monstrous St. Bernard.
He was a constant companion to Hungry Louie. Hungry Louie was a huge boy
who could never get enough to eat. Louie and the dog could sit on the barrack's
steps and finish off a loaf of bread in no time," Wohlwinder recalls.

"The troop train was ready to leave Montana with the dog
on it. A lady came to the train and asked for her dog. She said he'd stayed
the summer before at the camp. Tears rolled down big Hungry Louie's
cheeks."

Wohlwinder says most of the Harrison County boys returned
home from Montana. Robert Morrison, Garnett Ashbrook and Wohlwinder went
to Gunlock, Utah. It was here that the local boys met Beverly Johnson, a
native of Muhlenberg County. He was a mechanic for equipment used to build
a lake that covered 19 square miles of salt flats. Johnson remembers that
an estimated 7,000,000 ducks were on the lake.

Johnson and Wohlwinder returned home, found no jobs and
re-enlisted. Johnson went to Carlisle and Wohlwinder went to Eastern
Kentucky.

The next CCC reunion will be held the first weekend of
October at Cumberland Falls. This will be the 52nd time that the "boys" will
get together to rehash the "good old days."

"They weren't happy days then," Wohlwinder recalls, "But
it's a pleasure to talk about them now."

Here the Article Ends, Mr. Whohlwinder continues
with his CCC story below

The Carlisle Story

Thirty-nine of us were sent to Carlisle company, there
we remained. Some of the boys I knew, was raised up with and went to school
with: Ligie Moore, Charlie Slade, Russell Barnes, Billy Humphrey, Dwight
Taylor, Preacher Florence and Soup Fryman whose name was Virgil, we went
over to Carlisle.

Our company commander was Captain Bill. The Lieutenant
was Lieutenant Coldsnow and our First Sergeant was Pap Rodgers. The Mess
Sergeant was Dan Rich. Mess Sergeant was a good fellow, and ran a good mess
hall.

We were assigned to a Mr. Rose, our foreman. We called
him Pappy Rose. We did a little work not too far from Carlisle, on a farm.
We picked up rock, built a fence, filled up ditches with cedar trees where
the water washed out. The cedar trees caught the soil and restrained it,
and built the land back up level. We worked this farm for quite a while.
We were so close to camp that they brought our dinner out by truck and fed
us on the job. So we enjoyed it very much. Mr. Rose was awfully nice to us.
We put up fence, posted the posts for the fence, and cut the trees out of
locusts thickets to make the posts.

We got that job pretty well finished and the next job was
at Blue Licks. Blue Licks was a nice place. That's where Daniel Boone and
the Indians were in the last battle. At Blue Licks we go up a creek bed that
had dried up. Two trucks and a dump truck went way back up this creek bed
for a lot of miles and came to this farm. We worked the same jobs we'd been
doing at Carlisle. Mr. Rose, he was a fine foreman, Mr. Rose said, "alright
boys, let's get the job done". Each man had a job to do. We started cutting
up posts, setting the posts, tightening and lining them up, and started building
a fence. A good-size, long fence. We also took up a lot of rock at Blue Licks
and put in water gaps. But in the afternoon came all this rain. It poured
down rain. It must have been a cloudburst, because after it was all over
with, we started back to Blue Licks and we had to go back to that creek bed
and wade through the water to get back to a hotel. They called up camp, and
they sent trucks out to Blue Licks and took us in to camp and there we got
all cleaned up and ready for supper.

There was a train that left out of Paris going to Maysville.
Everybody called it the "ragweed special". It was some train. It came down
through Flemingsburg to Carlisle. There were some guys from Maysville who
were in Carlisle, about 3 or 4 of them, so they used to hobo that train to
Maysville on a Saturday and come back on a Sunday. They would hobo back to
Carlisle to not miss bed check. One of those boys was a character. I knew
him from 1935, his name was Ralph Pane but we called him Misery. Misery Pane.
Ole Misery couldn't go anywhere unless he got drunk. When he was home down
on the river there was plenty there to drink, so Misery got drunk. They put
Ole Misery in jail, and they brought him up in front of a lady judge. The
judge said, "Ralph Pane, I see you're back again. I'll have to give you 10
days in jail." And he said to the judge, "I could stand on my head for 10
days." And she said, "well, I'll give you 10 more to get back on your feet."
Ole Misery he stayed on in Maysville a little while longer on account of
his being in jail, but he finally came back to camp. Ole Misery was the same
Ole Misery, he was always in to something. But anyplace he'd go, if there
was anything to drink, he'd get drunk. Ole Misery, he was something.

We went on another job in Harrison County, so we loaded
up our two trucks and a dump truck which followed us, and headed for our
job. We had a job right there on Highway 27, not too far from Cynthiana.
We went to a farm. The farm was owned by a man named Sam Arnold. Sam Arnold
owned a big farm there, miles and miles of it. So we worked there doing the
same jobs as before, and we worked there for a long time. We built a lot
a fence. We cut a lot of posts out of locusts trees, we dug postholes, and
set the posts. We'd line those posts up, and an ole boy would say "on the
money". That boy would tamp those posts and then they'd be able to put the
fence up. We had fence stretchers to stretch the fence when we got it all
up. We filled up a lot of ditches. We took up a lot of rock. We did all kinds
of work there and everybody was very happy with the job.

Every day when the company rolled out, we took two trucks
and we walked up little steps to get up in the truck. We sat on benches along
each side, and they had people straddle the bench in the middle so you could
get a lot of people in each truck.

Down where we were in Harrison County, we had to carry
our lunches. Sack lunches with three sandwiches: one baloney, one cheese,
and one "jam" sandwich. You didn't know what would be between those two pieces
of bread jammed together, might be peanut butter, might be jelly or something
in between.

They also sent sent out coffee and a can of cream. So we
had a guy who, before we got out our sack and started eating, would go down
beforehand and build a fire. He'd get some water in the large can that we
carried with us in the truck, heat the water and make coffee. He would put
the coffee in a sack, put the sack in the water, boil it, and we got good
coffee. Good and strong.

Everybody took a canteen cup and filled it up with coffee,
then we had our sandwiches. We enjoyed every minute of it. We'd swap those
sandwiches. Boys would trade a cheese sandwich for a baloney sandwich or
a baloney sandwich for a jam sandwich and back and forth. We had a lot of
fun. After we had our sack lunch, we'd sit around and talk. We had smoking
time, everybody would gather around, roll cigarettes and smoke. If you had
tailor-made you'd smoke a tailor-made cigarette. So when smoking time was
over with, Pappy Rose would have a hole dug and everybody would throw their
cigarette butt in it and cover it up. And so that was the good ole days,
back in 1939.

A lot of boys from Cynthiana would hitchhike home on Friday
night and come back on Sunday at 11:00 to meet bed check. They were good
days, everybody loved it. We were making a lot of money, I was getting $5
month and $25 went home to take care of my mama and my 5 half-sisters. At
the end of the day we got back in the truck and headed back to camp in Carlisle.
When we got back to camp we really did have a ball. Some of the boys pitched
horseshoes. We had a boxing ring, and some of them would get up and fight
a round. Then when suppertime came we would clean up and have our supper,
then go to bed and get ready for another day, another place.

Carlisle was a fine town. From our camp we could see Carlisle.
We went to the courthouse on Saturdays and on Saturdays watch people pass
by. Everybody knew us, we knew most of them. They'd pass by and everybody
was happy and talking. And when the girls would pass by, we enjoyed it very
much. Right across the street, next street over from the courthouse, there
was a place they called the Broadway Inn. The Broadway Inn was a café,
and a hang-out for the CCCs. While we hung out there with the girls, somebody
would say something to somebody's girl and they'd get up and have a knuckle
drill. And the man would throw us all out.

I remember we went down to a place below Carlisle called
Flemingsburg to a job. When we got there we started to get to work, but I
got picked up and taken back to Carlisle. I was going to be sent to Ft. Thomas
hospital to have my tonsils taken out. I got back to Carlisle, cleaned up
and got good clothes on. Another boy was going to Ft. Thomas, too. His name
was Walter Fredrick. He was a big, strong husky boy who drove a truck. They
sent him to Ft. Thomas for a hernia operation. We got to Ft. Thomas, and
Major Redman took out my tonsils and repaired Fredrick's hernia.

We stayed a week or so in the hospital, then they sent
us over to the convalescent ward. We stayed there for quite awhile, we had
to wait until somebody came from Carlisle to the hospital in an ambulance
so we could get a ride back. Cecil Underwood and I had worked together in
Carlisle, but he'd been at Ft. Thomas a lot longer than me waiting on that
ambulance. . One day Cecil said he'd like to go home, and I said I did, too.
So I said, "Cecil, you got a little money?" He said, "I got a little money."
I said, "good." We went into Ft. Thomas and bought bus tickets to Cynthiana.
Cynthiana is where I'm from. So we got to Cynthiana and stayed all night
with my aunt. We got up the next morning, had breakfast, and hitched back
to Carlisle. I liked Carlisle and Carlisle liked us, I think.

By then it was nearly September, and my 6 months was about
up. I decided to go back home. In October I started working in the warehouses.
In the warehouses I loaded tobacco, lined up bales, weighing them, and setting
them in line for the sale. That's what I did. There were three warehouses
there in Cynthiana, they sent me one to the other, and if I could work all
week they'd give me $9 a week. And that was a lot better than $5 a month,
goodness sakes. So I worked in a warehouse in the winter and in the spring
I worked for farmers out over the county. I set tobacco out, took care of
crops and everything, $1.50 a day. Some places they'd board you for a dollar
a day and board. They called it three hots and a flop. A dollar a day and
board. That wasn't too bad. But I decided I'd come back in the CCCs again
anyway. My CCC days weren't over.